Thursday, 19 October 2006

Some Catholic Resources on the Web

Greetings again, it is once again time for me to share with you some of the resources I find very useful on the web. This time my focus is specifically Catholic resources, those sites that I find have a great resources or tools or function that makes them exceptional. The last time I reviewed 4 resources, 2 Author sites, and 2 resources sites. This time I am focusing on sites that for the most part I have discovered in the last year. The first three are collection sites - that is they collect and compile links and resources for you in one convenient place. The last 3 are author sites.

This is a site that allows you to create a custom home page with links to Catholic blogs, news sources, quotes of the day, prayer of the day and much much more. This site allows you to add your own links and creates a personalized site for you with what you want all on one convenient page. If you’re a blog reader, it lists the last 5 posts from any blog you add to the page. It is a great way to preview or skim a lot of blogs. This site allows you to customize the layout and even the color scheme to fit your tastes and preferences. You can even order the items in a section to your preferred layout.

This is a site I just found today. Columnists are profiled, and links galore. Broken into all kinds of categories, channels of different area’s of interest, community forums, a catholic mall with recommended resources, books and such and links to online stores, and links to most of the catholic publishers. It has a news section, and the top of the page profiles and highlights “today’s” new items. It is a nice clean crisp sight, vibrant colors and is available in both English or Spanish.

This is a very interesting site, in that it is neither specifically pro or con Opus Dei, it is a site that is a collection of links to sits, blogs, podcasts and other resources on the web both for and again opus dei. It is also multilingual it has sections in Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, Italian, and Others. The main listing area’s are Blogs, Websites, Podcasts and Testimonials and each of these sections have sub sections. The blogs, websites, podcasts are sorted by their language the Testimonials are broken up by who wrote it; Members, Relatives, Former Members, Clergy and General messages. If you know a little or a lot about this group that has been the center of so much conflict and misunderstanding, this site will give you story’s of people who love it and have been changed for ever and people who hate it.

Rev. Burke in his own words states: “The web offers a wonderful way of spreading information; also for persons like myself, whose writings happen to be scattered over quite a number of fields. So, following the suggestion of a number of people (and with the indispensable technical help of Henry Kairo and my other webmasters) I am now putting most of them together on this web-site.” Many of his books are available here for free in a number of languages. Rev. Burke was both a professor of modern languages and of Canon Law, here he has compiled most of his published writings, articles, books, and more. This site is a gem waiting to be studied and explored. There is a great deal here and it will challenge your tremendously.

For those of you who read my blog regularly this will not be a new name to you. I have reviewed a number of his books over the last year and will continue to do so over the next number of months. Dr. Hahn’s site had many resources for biblical studies, and links to acquire many of his lectures and conference talks and other resources, as well as a great collection of Catholic links. Hahn’s site may not be the prettiest to look at or even have changed much in a long time, but it has a great deal to offer in the links, resources, and biblical studies materials compiled in this one site.http://www.scotthahn.com/

This site is dedicated to promoting the writings of St. Josemaria Escriva the founder of Opus Dei. There are many great things about this site, the complete works of St. Josemaria Escriva are available for free, all of his books published in his life and posthumously. These 9 volumes of the canon of his writings are available in their entirety. They can be read through from beginning to end, or skimmed from point to point. The greatest feature is you can search the entire collection, so it is like having an index to his complete works. The site is well laid out and presented in a clear manner. It also has many version of the covers of each book so as you view the site you can see some of the progression in the cover images and how they relate to the work.http://www.escrivaworks.org/I hope that you found some of these resources helpful, and that they will help you in your journey. If you want to check out my previous article listing four resources, click here, and keep your eyes pealed for more articles to come in the future.Just a quick aside I was planning on profiling another site: His Mercy, http://hismercy.ca/ it has a number of resources, a downloadable ebook of the Catechism, An electronic rosary, numerous Papal Encyclicals and more. But it was down recently and just went back up. Some other sites to check out are:http://catholicanada.com/web/index.phphttp://www.cathcom.net/Let me know what you find out there so we can share them with others.

"There is no such thing as coincidence, just the illusion of coincidence! ... There is no certainty, only opportunity! ... This is the most important moment in your life... Commit to it! ... I, like god, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence!"-V in V for Vendetta